cladking

There are at least a couple Egyptian myths about the origin of man. The better known probably dates to later times and has the god Khnum make man from clay on his potter's wheel. The other is older or at least has elements that are older and has man springing from tear drop of Re', the sun "god".

Actually I think the assessment that we know virtually nothing is highly accurate. The value of science, the very reason that we or our ancestors pursued science at all is for the sake of making predictions. We can very accurately predict the behavior of our machines but we can't predict much of anything else. If we could make even the most basic predictions about nature then the stock and financial markets would run like well oiled machines rather than gambling halls. The weatherman would at least get current conditions right every time. We believe we have great knowledge because our machines have made us comfortable at a very great cost and enormous waste. We believe we know a lot because we see what we know and everything else is invisible to us.

I don't believe humans are really very special at all. We're more dextrous than most animals and a little more clever, no doubt, but what really sets us apart is simply language. We are capable of passing down learning across generations and this led to numerous advances in language use such as writing, the printing press, telecommunications, and the internet. It is language which allows each generation to progress and not that humans are somehow "special". Thanksa for the post. "This also comes from the many Egyptian Gods, like Anubis and Horus." This is completely untrue. There is no such basis for these so called gods within 1000 years from when they arose.

The simple answer is that humans used to be part of nature and they studied nature through observation and logic. We simply have forgotten that nature was divided into its various aspects for study and these were given human characteristics to help in remembering their relationships. We in modern times misinterpret these various aspects of nature as "gods". This exact same misinterpretation underlay the the legends, myths, religions, etc, etc, etc for four millinea.

The green solution. I believe the most ancient texts are written in a misinterpreted language that is highly scientific. These texts say a great deal about this place and the chemicals and their characteristics. As I interpret the language it very distinctly states that the basalt "mat" under the carbonated water turns green. This is not consistent with the only colored material I know to be in the water; copper sulfate; There's only one "mat" and one "bow" though there could be other "turquoise". Conditions here are most highly variable. After it is "purified" the temperature can be as low as about 58 F. It is below the "cool lakes at 81 feet", but can easily become quite cold under some conditions. It can probably get as hot as about 130 F under some conditions and can even stagnate rarely. I should add that at times there would be large amounts of siderite (iron) as well as various particulate debris and organic waste material from people. The water starts its treck carbonated but by the time it reaches the "mat" should almost always be almost completely decarbonated though it will sometimes pick up other gasses from a lot of handling. It will also contain very small amounts of an aromatic organic (myhrr). I can identify several other things in the water but they are in trace amounts. It's a real "soup" over the course of a season but at any given point in time its condition can be closely estimated. The copper sulfate will primarily appear early in the annual season with the siderite but other conditions are steadier over time though always variable. When the water is "purified" it will be cleaner, colder, and higher in natron and copper sulfate levels low. I greatly appreciate everyone's help. If I don't repeat it later... ...thanks.

My limited knowledge of chemistry suggests that copper sulfate in solution with salt, baking soda, and sodium decahydrate (natron) will precipitate copper hydroxide which would accumulate on the bottom of a very large container. There would be numerous contaminants in this water and solution levels of the copper sulfate would be probably less than .05% but highly variable. The water would be very slightly acidic and turn over rapidly. I believe there is evidence it would turn basalt green. Does this sound right to anyone?

I believe this is one of those things that seem true to everyone but is absolutely false. Perhaps at one time there was truth in it but in the modern world ideas are a dime a dozen. You can invent cold water fusion and people will just ignore you until you start producing lots of megawatts and this might not happen since there will be various forces working against you. If an idea has military implications then it will probably get a hearing. "Intelligence" (such as it is) has far less value than ideas. I think we are just going to have to agree to disagree on Freud. Many people for whom I have great respect think Freud was onto something. I couldn't disagree more. I believe everyone believes what he wants to believe and Freud simply charted his own thinking and beliefs. There is no set way people believe or even think. We are engrained with perspectives reflective of our time and place so even people with different beliefs and different ways to think will have great similarities in perspective. There will be far more similarity between an atheist and a priest than between an ancient fig cutter and Christopher Columbus. Communication is based on shared referents and those from different times and places will lack not only the referents but the perspectives. To my mind Freud simply reflected a culmination of 19th century thought which needs to become obsolete. This doesn't mean all his observations and deductions have no basis in reality, merely that his conclusions are far too broadly applied.

Excellent point s but the pragmatist in me says don't count your chickens until they're hatched so #1 doesn't exist until it's a chicken.

Modern people have lost sight of all the important things. Human life is a race because we must race to understand our past. We must race to avoid being eaten by the sabre-toothed tiger and we must race to assure the world we leave our progeny is the best possible world. Human nature demands that we understand our enviroment which means we must understand nature. It appears we are falling short almost across the board and the best chance "catch up" is to recognize our ignorance and then reevaluate what we actually know. In learning about the natural order we'll always find that it will appear to be supernatural until it is more properly understood. As I said earlier in the thread, we understand such a tiny percentage of nature that it's only hubris to try to assign anything to the supernatural.

To me "mind" is largely just what the brain/ body does. It acts on beliefs so there is similarity between the concepts of "mind" and "belief". I suspect the more one subdivides the concept of mind the less that exists at all. Certainly in humans the unconscious is a substantial part of the make-up of "mind" but most of this is quantifiable at least in theory. I doubt that the "subconscious" exists at all or that any part can be quantified. It doesn't even exist unless the individual believes it does. To a large extent you're right that a lot of the difference here is largely semantics and most of the rest is perspective. There are obvious connections between people and things that are not quantifiable or even identifiable. To experimental science this is usually equated with non-existence. It's likely that until terms and parameters are better defined these subjects will not be giving up any facts to modern science. There are myriad ways things affect one another. I have a lot of doubt about your view of the ubiquitousness of consciousness. No doubt it's far more widespread, diverse, and extensive than generally believed but it's difficult for me to grant it to a potato or a stone. Certainly the potato needs some level of some ability to do what is needed and stones always "know" to roll downhill but there must be some level below which "consciousness" has no real world meaning. The mind can make connections between seemingly unrelated processes and events so some of the connections we see in nature may be largely projections of ourselves, our minds, into our observations. We are wired to see what we expect and part of this is the propensity to see what we know. If we see connections between two consciousnesses or between an object and another we're far more likely to see confirmation. I think of myself as the first person to be intelligent enough to know he's an idiot. Of course, intelligence has many parameters and were I more capable in more of them I might never have even made the discovery. In recent times I've learned that everyone before 2000 BC used to know they were stupid so my "discovery" is really just a "rediscovery" anyway. (chuckle, indeed)

Perhaps I'm being dense here and there would be no advantage other than preventing insects and rodents from attacking the body while it's drying. I suppose there would be no changes caused by such a process would be detectible with modern instruments and knowledge. Perhaps it could be possible to autopsy mites and the like to see if any died of CO2 suffocation.

Gees; My error. I skimmed the entire thread except page 5 before I even asked. I didn't remember having followed the original link because I hadn't even skimmed very much of it but since your mentioning it was on page 5 it has been entirely skimmed. I do owe this thread several comments and will try to get to them today. Regarding your last post; I have read some Freud when young and found his work fascinating and brilliant. Indeed, until a little later I believed he had actually made a few discoveries that could be universally applied to humans and the way we think. This would be a rather remarkable accomplishment even by my thinking at that time. But since I have come to believe that he is merely describing his own mind and that is one of a 19th century scientist rather than anything that can be applied to anyone else. His world is not a very attractive world at that. It was only later that I came to believe that it was a misunderstanding of Freud's work leading to the disintegration of society and mass murder. Humans are almost infinitely adaptable because of our ability to accept any belief we choose. We can even choose to divide our minds into the ego and id and have dreams that explain ourselves in these terms. Certainly it is we ourselves living in this world of our own superegos so anything we learn from such a process is likely to actually apply to us and our understanding of reality, religion, or thought. It's not my contention that there's anything wrong with seeing reality from such a perspective, merely that the results can't be universally applied. Since all our actions are predicated solely on our beliefs we will actually become a sort of manifestation of those beliefs in time. Individuals are always a product of their time and place because there is always a set of definitions and beliefs associated with a time and place which "all" perspectives share. These beliefs are not necessarily founded in reality and historically have been in a range from insanity to confusion. An entire nation can go mad and tear itself apart trying to root out and murder people it suddenly deems different. For a long time now people have had the notion that humans are somehow different in that they are "intelligent", "conscious", and "distinct" from other life forms. "I think therefore I am" isn't supposed to be applied to a goldfinch. Our hubris doesn't only apply to natural species but to nature itself since most people believe all knowledge is possessed by one individual or another. Yet here we are incapable of even agreeing on such basic concepts as the nature of consciousness or the nature of human consciousness (you and I seem relatively close here but I doubt many are with us). It is simply my opinion that there is virtually no way that our thought and consciousness can't be organized. Indeed, I even believe that a vastly different system was in place before 2000 BC that was similar to other animals. People are brought up and spoon fed the beliefs of their parents and the society at large. "Bonding" at an animal level can certainly be a part of this process and one that is likely to make the individual more attuned with nature and the body and will draw him to others on this basis. While personal opinion may be largely irrelevant it would seem to me anything that removes our concept of ourselves from ivory towers and omniscience is a survival characteristic at the current point in history. Humans have become so divorced from nature that we have become a serious threat; mostly to ourselves but to aspects of nature as well. Freud was a pretty clear thinker and will probably make a very important case study someday but I doubt that day will come before we have a much clearer picture and ability to quantify more aspects of the human brain/ body (mind). For now, in my opinion, he is primarily a window into Freud himself and provides the more asture among us an ability to see (somewhat distorted) images of the way our own minds work. It's not so much I dislike the man as that I consider him dangerous to children and the cause of most of the mass murder of the 20th century. None of this is direct responsibility of course. So long as one is secure in his own beliefs and can keep his own perspective (literally) Freud might make a good source for reading. I doubt there are any ultimate truths in his work though this may be too high a standard.

Tough question here; First an easy one to get warmed up though... Would there be any benefit to mummification from exposing the body to a CO2 enviroment while it's being dried? I'm confident there would be in theory but how about in the real world where most of rotting is being caused by aneroebic bacteria? If a mummy were produced using such a technique would there be a means to detect it after 4700 years?

I looked through the thread and even googled it. I don't see or remember to what you refer.

Good post, well said. Regarding the above I believe that what everyone has been missing for the last 4,000 years is that while everything does, indeed, fit together and form a wondrous whole, we are seeing only a tiny part of that whole. We can cut into it and view it from every single imaginable angle and see its regularity, repeatability, and logic but most of it is still unseen and unknown. It's not really safe to make predictions about the unknown. Yes, we hypothesize but this are driven by what's known rather than what's unknown. When we make assumptions about unknowns we are assuming the conclusion; in this case that all of nature is regular, comprehensible, and knowable. We are replacing one belief system with another. We have a perception of our omniscience generated by our technology and rarely are able to see just how shallow our knowledge really is. Our understanding can be no deeper than the result of scientific experiment because of the nature of our metaphysics. We can, at least in theory, amend our metaphysics to include mathmatical constructs but to date there is little justification nor a move in this direction. Until hypothesis generates prediction (technology) it has no utility and once it generates predictions than it should become testable by experiment. Of course this isn't certain. So we're left to study nature whose dimensions aren't even known though we sense we have a handle on her laws despite the fact that none of the important things day to day things are known and even fundamental forces can only be measured. Not needing to spend all day seeking food or wresting it from the earth by the sweat of our brow doesn't mean we know everything or live in the Garden of Eden. Our ignoring of everything which doesn't involve the lab or its products does not cause it to not exist. Back later.

The yen was a yr 52 with slight wear and damage. I believe that almost all pschics and palm readers and the like are fake and the vast majority of them know they are fakes. But, I do agree with Gees that there are things going on that are not in plain sight and some of these things could underlie beliefs in ESP and the like. This doesn't mean I think that anyone can necessarily communicate telepathically or that there is anything supernatural. Without knowing what's natural it would be foolish to ascribe something to the supernatural. We each think in different ways but none of us knows how to explain the important things that occur. All we can do is predict the gross and immediate so long as most of the variables are known or can be estimated. If we were so smart we'd train the butterfly in China to give us only good weather.

At the risk of causing the topic to drift there is also the difference in handedness; http://www.wherecreativitygoestoschool.com/vancouver/left_right/rb_test.htm

I once calculated that it would take about 42 X 10 ^ 806,999 monkeys and typewriters to get War and Peace in a single try. The concept of infinite universes and the like is simply absurd to me. It seems apparent that God(s) must exist, but probably impossible to know the nature(s) of such. People like to pencil whip problems and invent solutions while jumping to conclusions. The world as it exists is an impossibility of the highest order yet here we are. I doubt it would matter if Tipler is right or not (I seriously doubt he is), he wouldn't be believed because everyone already has his own beliefs. WYSIWYG.

I suspect much of the reason we tend to dislike talking to very slow people is that it reminds us of our own shortcomings. When you can see the wheels turning you can be sure they aren't going very far. I believe ancient people didn't have this problem since they knew they weren't going too far anyway; (43) "Don't let your heart get big because of your knowledge. (44) Take counsel with the ignorant as well as with the scholar. (45) (For) the limits of art are not brought, (46) (and) no artisan is equipped with perfection.(12) (47) Good discourse is more hidden than green stone,(13) (48) yet may be found among the maids at the grindstones.(14) When I was young I believed everyone else could read minds so I taught myself to do it. Much later I learned most people get their cues from facial expressions.

Oh, my goodness, no. Just a few years I believed half of what you're saying but I no longer believe it at all. People tend to make up their minds and then never change them which is why almost all scientific advancement is demographic in character. Old ideas literally die out to be replaced with fresh new ideas. I don't think it's always been this way. I would agree that the truth will win in the long run and that scientific progress as it applies to thought is a steady advancement but along the way there are lots of ups and downs. Individuals are responsible for the advancement but it's a sort of group think which determines present "truth" and this "truth" may have little bearing on reality. We live in a world that most resources are wasted and ideas are a dime a dozen but in the real world, the one that has the final accounting and doesn't care about man, natural resources, human resources, and "mental" resources are the only things of true and lasting "value". It's true that "love", "loyalty", etc are of great lasting value but only to people and nature doesn't give a whit about man. It's what we do collectively that is held to a real world accounting and we actually act on beliefs both individually and collectively. All people believe what they choose to believe and act only on those beliefs. Most people have huge difficulty adapting their beliefs to fit new evidence and new facts because people become their beliefs. This is just the way we are and the amount of deviation is much less than you think. To me the unconscious mind is nothing but memories, knowledge, ability, muscle memory, body, and various learning. The brain is wired and thought fascilitates the ability to access these as needed. The unconscious is just that; unconscious. Dreams don't tell us anything about about ourselves but merely disclose the way the brain is wired by how it processes errant signals that become the dreams. You make an interesting argument about the need and importance of dreams but I'm mostly unswayed. I think the advantage is survival rather than interpersonal relations. In a school of fish each indididual has a better chance against predation than they would have individually. Multiple potential targets don't fool most predators but only the exterior fish can be targets at all. The same applies to nesting birds and most animals which move or exist in colonies or flocks. Some species, of course, also need the actions of multiple individuals to survive. There's a lot going on that isn't in plain sight. I used to tell a person all about themselves just by using clues that they display in speech, apparel, etc. Of course, I needed their cooperation in how they answered the my "predictions" since this was where most of the clues existed. Sometimes it would be uncanny how accurately I could get it. Frankly a lot of it was just guessing, stabs in the dark, and looking for more clues. Operating almost strictly on intuition doesn't hurt. It works best in person. We certainly seem to have vastly different estimations of the nature of the unconscious mind. Most of what I think I know about it has only developed in the last fifteen years and especially in the last three years so I'm not married to any of these "beliefs". I'm not really married to very many beliefs at all. Exactly. I'm pretty confident that most species other than dogs think humans are mentally slow. Most species seem to exist or coexist in a sort of unison while people are always the odd man out. At least dogs think we're smart unless they're just humoring us for the free handouts. Stay well.

This is a very interesting discussion and doubly so since I'm in general agreement with it. I don't believe there are so many sorts of consciousness though but the difference is more a degree of consciousness. I doubt there is so much difference between any two animals as is being suggested. Certainly bacterial, plant and small animal conmsciousness is probably pretty limited in scope but other animals experience life pretty similarly. Even something like a toad might have some limitations to his awareness and if you look in its eyes it appears no one's home but I wouldstill imagine he'd express life in much the same way as other animals were he capable of such expression. My largest disagreement might be with the differentiation of "flocking" animals. All social animals tend to flock and this applies to humans as well when they share a destination. Watch the cars turning left at a green light; if the first car makes an illegal turn there's a nearly 90% probability that they will all make the turn illegally. If the first car makes a legal turn there's about a 75% chance they all will. Some people will follow the car in front of them across a railroad track on the assumption that it must have been safe for him. Every year millions of college students congregate in Florida or whereever the current hot spot happens to be. Everytime Notre Dame plays a football game at home South Bend becomes impassable even if you're notgoing to the "big game". There are numerous natural advantages to flocking and recent research shows that the individual in front isn't necessarily the leader and that almost any individual in some species can become the leader. We tend to anthropomorphize them even when their actions are dissimilar to humans. What sets humans apart is language and it is language the allows the huge "unconscious" that we possess. We not only learn through language but we uuse it to think. While language is "confused" as a medium of communication it is somewhat more effective as medium of thought since we know the exact definition of intended words, each referent, and the meaning of any grammar. To a very real extent it is the massive amount of learning and logic that allows formation of the unconscious which can provide us with relevant or important input on a just in time basis. The unconscious of other animals is not only smaller (usually very smaller) but it contains information they've learned on their own and is only of value to that individiual or to other members of their own species. The real difference between consciousness in life forms is nominal and apparent rather than real. The apparent difference between humans and termites is primarily the result of language. We tend to downplay the accomplishments of other species but they are just as real and require theory just as much as brain surgery or rocket science. Beavers didn't stumble on dam building any more than Neil Armstrong just stumbled onto the moon. It's a matter of degree and not intelligence and not consciousness.

These were built by Egyptians sure enough but they were not the superstitious stumblebums that are always depicted but rather logical and highly intelligent scientists. Their science is wholly misinterpreted and mistranslated today. Where our science is founded on observation and experiment their's was based on observation and logic. Where few understand the modern metaphysics the ancient metaphysics was language itself! The people were thereby powerful and capable. I don't know if they descended from Atlanteans or were inspired by aliens but there is ample evidence that the people on site built these structures and that the people were Egyptians. Almost everything we know comes from tombs so our perspective is kaleidoscopic and highly slanted but one of the things that decorated tombs can tell you is how these people were related. Even Khufu's brother is buried right next to the Great pyramid with inscriptions such as "brother of the king" and a statement that he wanted to be buried next to "Khufu's Horizon" (the pyramid). All these bodies appear to be and are consistent with what we believe to be the ancient Egyptians. So far as I know there are no anomalies in this regard. This sampling is highly biased as well because only the nobles and wealthy could afford large tombs with lots of painting and writing on them. Even some of these skeletons, like those of the common workers, exhibit signs of a lifetime of hard work.

There were two primary quarries on site for G1 (the Great Pyramid). The main quarry was due south and horseshoe shaped with the ends pointed up toward the pyramid. It's probable that around 70% of the weight (6 1/2 million tons) of the pyramid came from this quarry with much of this placed near the bottom and hoisted by a counterweight at the NE corner that ran down the cliff face. This was a 300' run and the basis of historical accounts that say stones "flew" to the pyramids 300' at a time. There was also a quarry at and around the Sphinx. About 25% of the weight came from here. These stones were pulled up from the quarry by the eastern cliff face counterweights that pulled stone due north from this region on the east side of the so called queens pyramids. These were pulled to the so called causeway and transported through the saw works on the east side to the center and then lifted straight up the pyramid one step at a time. The remaing 5% was primarily imported from across the river at the Turah Quarry but was imported from all over Egypt and even materials came in from far flung places such as Nubia and Lebanon. There may have been wood imported from the west since trees grew in low lying areas up until shortly before great pyramid building began. There is evidence that Khufu himself took expeditions to the west supposedly to secure "mefat" (mfkzt) which is supposedly red ochre. This is highly improbable because there were substantial red ochre deposits at Elephantine Island which were far more easily accessed. Very little science has been done in identifying the specific quarries from which stone came and this can be difficult to determine. These estimates are largely based on scant information and a lot of deduction. There was extensive technology employed to build these structures and Egypt had a very diverse and substantial economy drawing raw materials from far and wide and exporting paper, rope, and food. They had job titles such as "overseer of the metal shop" or 'weigher/ reckoner" rather than titles suggesting ramps or the use of brute force. Several products and materials are mentioned in the Pyramid Texts that aren't native to egypt and more exist in the record or as artefacts. The work was apparently seasonal but it was eight to ten months so it's very unlikely many farmers were employed. Construction required only about 600 men and jobs were highly sought and awarded to the home town of those who had made improvements to the process. Of course substantial numbers of men were needed in the quarries, especially during the first couple years. This would be approximately 3,500 tapering to 300 by the end of the project. These men probably used temporary quarters such as tents in fair weather and were accomodated in the workmen's village during poor weather. There was also extensive work to tend to the workmen and their needs and this was done by another 600 women and dozens of scribes, clerks, and administrators. Gender was not strictly determinative to job assignments but most workers were men and are referred to as such. Most of the others were women. The actual means used to build the pyramid is very extensively evidenced in the physical record as well as the actual culture and in the historical accounts. Indeed, everything points in a single direction and everything says that they used natural water pressure generated by a naturally carbonated water source to build. The fact is that none of this evidence is determinative or certain but in aggregate it makes a compelling case to supplant debunked ramps and the mysteries created by conventional theories. Simply stated the "land of the west", "land of Horus", or "land of rainbows" where all of the great pyramids were built was a huge cold water geyser field. They learned over the centuries to control thjis water and to use its weight to lift stones. More simply stated they used water on top of the pyramid under construction to fill counterweights that became heavier than the stones attached to them at the bottom of the opposite side. The counterweight fell and twenty tons of stones flew to the top. There is one piece of evidence that is fairly compelling and shows this process. This is the gravimatric scan that discloses that it is a five tep pyramid. It had to be five steps because they could lift stones only 81' 3" at a time since this was the height of the water column. The owners of the scanwon't allow me to put a grid on it proving it's five steps but these steps are highly visible even though misinterpreted. http://hdbui.blogspot.com/ The fact is that all the physical evidence and all thecultural evidence fits this pattern. There is even a tiny ben ben stone growing on the primeval mound in the so-called Sphinx Temple today!!! http://www.egyptiandawn.info/images/plates/small/7-62sup.jpg (photo curtesy of Robert Temple) http://www.egyptiandawn.info/chapter7.html

This is essentially untrue and shows the tremendous speculation and interpretation involved with all theories concerning construction and especially the orthodox assumptions about construction. There is what is most probably a "builders' village" nearby (SE of G2) where the workmen for both G1 and G2 lived but this town is far too tiny to support the number of workers who are speculated to have been involved in building and operating ramps. The area is in the center of this photo and is not so much larger than the soccer fields to the east. It is some 500' by 900' and would support only several hundred office workers today; http://wikimapia.org/#lang=en&lat=29.969398&lon=31.139803&z=17&m=bs Yet this tiny town is supposed to have held not only the tens of thousands necessary to move stone but also the quarry workers, the wives and children and the supplies and tools to work. The workers cemetery has equal numbers of men and women suggesting there was comparable amounts of men and womens work and they were equally safe (few skeletons show trauma and those that do indicate high level medical care). This is absolutely inconsistent with the absurd notion that any muscle based system was in place. The problem is that clues are sparse and that the clues that do exist do not support orthodox assumptions. The ancient culture left exceedingly few records. The little that survived came primarily from tombs leading to a sort of "sample error" in our understanding. To complicate matters the one piece of writing that survives from the era eventually evolved and changed into a book of magic for people many centuries later so Egyptologists take this work to be a book of magic and to extrapolate from that that the people were highly superstitious. While the later works and culture are well understood and well documented there is simply an assumption that the older book must mean the same thing despite the fact it has no apparent meaning; it appears to be mere gobblety gook and contradicts itself and reality when parsed using modern understanding. It has proven impossibler to date to learn anything about the culture from this source and all the scepters and iconms are still unknown. No aspect of the "relgion" has been positively shown to exist. In other words these people are said to be moribound with religion but we know nothing at all of the religion except what's derived or extrapolated from many centuries later. ( I can't create a new paragraph) (paragraph) I believe that everything they did and said including their artwork all depicts or is related to pyramid building. Their neters were derived from the natural processes that were used to build pyramids. This culture was very very alive and this zest for life even carried over into their burial practices and is mistaken for religion. The people were a force of nature and a part of nature. They wouldn't understand a concept like "man made" because mans' work was nature's work. They would say "by the hands of Thot" to express the concept but this isn't identical to "man made" because the hands of Thot would necessarily involve other aspects of nature as well. "Thot" is merely "human progress" and is not man or men. (paragraph) Each neter must be understood to appreciate the culture.

There is ample evidence that the Egyptians were in the area at the time the great pyramids were built likely between about 2900 and 2730 BC. It's a virtual certainty that Khufu (or an actual individual we know by that name) was the Egyptian king at the time that The Great Pyramid was built around 2750 BC. Traditional dating places this a little later but it's impossible to convert ancient Egyptian dating to our dating at this time and C14 dating suggests it's a little older. I doubt the actual Egyptians on site would agree with the contention that they built it. Every indication is they gave the bulk of the credit to the "neters" for the construction. They used the term "neter" to refer to natural phenomena as determined through the context of what they actually wrote. The word appears to be mistakingly translated as "god" since that time. In their language "neter" was actually a colloquial term for "aspect of nature" and terms were selected to determine meaning rather than word meaning being determined by context as in our language. All "aspects of nature" were anthropomorphized to show their relationships and natures. Egyptology is essentially a belief system founded on the assumptions that the ancient Egyptians were changeless and superstitious people who built tombs by dragging stones up ramps. These assumptions have been debunked except it is not yet established that they were not superstitious. As soon as real science is done anywhere in the region the pyramids were built, it will be established they were not superstitious as well. It's somewhat improbable the cartouches are fake and are not central to the argument that "Khufu" was king. They are simply further corroboration. At one time they were critically important to the argument and it is known that the finder had the means and motives to fake them. The ancient Egptians recorded the pyramid construction everywhere but most of it is misinterpreted and misunderstood.